


Guardian

by Sholio



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-04
Updated: 2010-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-10 22:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mai should've known that life after the war wouldn't be nearly as boring as she'd feared, especially since she has an important job to do. Post-series, contains spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guardian

**Author's Note:**

> Possible trigger warning: one scene involves (non-graphic) torture with a knife.

It's summer in the tropics, and night smothers the Fire Nation capital like a thick dark blanket. The taverns and teashops have closed, and dawn has not yet begun to brighten the sky above the crater rim. The streets are empty of all save a few, most of them bent on unsavory business.

Under a star-spangled sky, Mai slips through the darkness. She's wearing her working clothes; the heavy black and red robes that she wears for political business have been left behind in the palace, and she feels light and free in her loose leggings and flowing sleeves. She's been on the trail of her quarry for an hour or so, through alleys and private gardens and the back courtyards behind the comfort houses. She's fairly sure, now, that she knows where he's going. This old volcano is riddled with tunnels  a veritable maze of natural lava tubes, abandoned steam shafts, old utility corridors, half-completed subterranean building projects. The royal family's secret bunker is but one of the many secrets hidden in the undercity. No one knows them all, though Mai thinks that she and Ty Lee probably come closest  given easy access as friends of the royal children, but without the many responsibilities of the prince and princess, they spent pleasant hours exploring the catacombs when they were young.

Some parts of the undercity are fairly well known even to the average city-dweller, though. Her target appears to be heading for the old factory district, where there are many old tunnels leading back into the crater wall. Once, they drew geothermal energy for the city's manufacturing operations, before the main centers of Fire Nation industrialization moved elsewhere and the capital city was given over mostly to the homes of minor bureaucrats and the service industries that support them.

Mai feels her lips tug in a tiny, grim smile. After all, once you've attempted to kill your nation's leader and failed, there are not many places to hide. Unluckily for this fool, he will soon be in one of her places of strength.

She takes a shortcut behind the old metal refinery, and finally, _finally_ glimpses him from afar, scaling the chain-link fence that surrounds one of the warehouses. Mai tucks her arms to her sides and speeds from her stealthy lope into a ground-eating run, vaulting the fence with barely a break in her stride. She hears the quick temp of footsteps behind the warehouse, and races after them, hearing the quick staccato speed up in response. After the tension of pursuit, it's a relief to just be able to run, shedding the well-worn inhibitions that stifle her in public. Like peeling off her hot, heavy robes, or shedding one skin to reveal another beneath, she feels light and free, a vengeance demon spreading her wings against the night. She springs to the top of a low wall, and there he is  no, there are two of them: another beckons to the fleeing assassin from behind a bent and twisted metal grating covering one of the shafts into the mountain.

They can run, but there is nowhere to hide. Mai flicks her wrists, and knives slide into her hands, glinting between her fingers. With practiced ease, she throws as she jumps. The man sprinting towards the supposed safety of the mineshaft screams and goes down, with a knife through each foot and one through each hand, holding him spread-eagled on the rock. She could have stopped him bloodlessly, pinning his clothing, but she is not inclined to be gentle, not this night, not after what this man nearly cost her. She's running as she hits the ground, throwing another wave of knives towards the other enemy in the shadows. An aborted wave of fire curls upwards and dissipates in the night as the second person's hands are pinned to the wall by their cuffs.

Mai leaps over the one who's still writhing and moaning on the ground, and draws one of her longer knives as she approaches the firebender  a woman, she notes absently. "Are there more of you? Are you with an organized group?"

"To the frozen depths with you," the woman snarls.

Mai clamps down hard on something deep inside herself, something small that cries _No! _and then goes silent. In one quick slice, she draws the knife down the woman's cheek, from just below her eye to the bottom of her jaw. She does not cut deep, just a hairsbreadth under the skin, enough to raise blood and perhaps leave a faint scar.

The woman screams. She is plainly not as conversant with Mai in the ways of knives; she does not know how deeply she's been cut, and as the blood drips off her chin, she begins to sob.

"You and your friend tried to kill the Fire Lord tonight," Mai says, wiping the blade on the woman's thigh. _And nearly succeeded_  but she will not think of that. She's Zuko's personal bodyguard, and the failure is her own. Many have tried, but this is the first time anyone has gotten so close. "Why did you do it?"

The woman swallows convulsively, choking on her tears. "Because he is a traitor! Our nation was powerful and great under Ozai, and now we crawl on our bellies for foreign powers " She draws a breath, obviously planning to continue. Mai silences her with a slap on the undamaged side of her face.

"Are there more of you?"

"No  no! It's just me and Sheng." The woman twists, trying to see past Mai to the man on the ground. "Did you kill him? You bitch, is he alive?"

Mai does not answer, turning instead to look down at the would-be assassin. His whimpers have stopped, and he appears to have passed out from blood loss or shock.

Sheng has been a trusted servant in the palace all his life, and his father and grandfather before him. When Mai was a child, Sheng was a boy working in the kitchens; she thinks he used to have a little crush on Azula in those days, and he'd smuggle out sweets to them between meals.

And now  now, these are the times in which they live.

"Please," the woman begs, and Mai thinks that her choked, frightened sobs are no longer for herself. She loves this man. Mai is not sure what he might be to her  brother, lover, husband? But she loves him.

"I almost lost something precious tonight," Mai says. She yanks her knife free of the man's hand, places its bloody edge against his throat. "Would you like to know how it feels?"

"No." The woman's tears mix with the blood on her face in long dark runnels. "No, please."

There is no one here but the three of them. No one will ever know what happened. She could say anything to Zuko. _They attacked me; I had no choice._

That would have been the way of Ozai's world, the world in which Mai grew up: where dark things happened in the shadows, with lies to smooth their way into the day. That's not the world Zuko is trying to build. And yet, these people deserve it. Poisoners  cowardly filth, she thinks; it's an ugly, pathetic way to kill, and a still uglier way to die. If she takes them to prison, later to be tried before a court, they can still plot against the people Mai loves. Maybe next time, they will succeed.

Zuko could have killed Azula, but he did not. That's the way of this new world, too. Killing these people would be a betrayal of all that he's worked for, and even if she's doing it for him, she cannot do it _to_ him.

The woman's sobbing is getting on her nerves. "Shut up, before I cut your lips off," Mai says, and gets a bit of cruel satisfaction from the way the woman's weeping chokes off abruptly, like the throw of a switch. She draws Sheng's bleeding hands behind his back to tie them, and gains a little more satisfaction from knowing how delicate the hand's many little nerves and bones are; he'll likely never have full use of them again.

As revenge goes, it will have to be enough.

 

******

 

At the gates of the palace, she turns her prisoners over the guards. She stops in the inner courtyard to wash her hands and face at a fountain. Then she goes upstairs, through long halls lit with flickering sconces, to Zuko's quarters.

He's awake and sitting up in bed, though he looks wan and a bit limp. The Avatar is with him, perched on the edge of the bed, and there are cards spread out on the coverlet between them. The little earthbender girl lies across the foot of his bed in a bathrobe that's much too big for her, snoring, with her limbs stretched out in all directions like a beached squidopotamus. The Avatar's irritating pet is curled up on her chest.

Mai knows that she could not have left Zuko in safer hands, for all that she finds his friends  his weird little family  impossibly annoying at times. "I see that you're out of the bathroom," she says from the doorway.

Zuko winces and looks, if possible, paler.

"The palace physicians say that the poison is out of his system and he'll be fine," the Avatar says cheerfully.

"For certain definitions of 'fine'," Zuko mutters. "I feel like warmed-over death." There are dark shadows under his eyes.

"It does take all the fun out of beating you at cards." Aang giggles, sounding much more like a little kid than the most powerful person in the world. "Well, most of the fun."

Zuko scowls at him. "I hate cards."

"I know, but you'll never get better at it if you don't practice, right?" Aang swipes the cards together into a pile and stands up. He holds out a hand and Momo flies to his shoulder. Toph sits up, blinking. "Not until the cake is all gone!" she says loudly, and then flops back down and starts snoring again.

"Um," Aang says. "Do you want me to ..."

Zuko waves a hand. "Oh, leave her there. I did throw up on her; I guess I owe her. I'll kick her out later."

"Waking her up is dangerous," Aang warns. For a moment he hesitates, and Mai can tell that he wants to ask her what happened with her hunt, but in the end, he doesn't. The fact that she is back is apparently answer enough. "See you guys in the morning," he says, and giving them a little wave, he vanishes out the door.

The bed is very large, so Toph is not taking up much of it. Mai slides over to join Zuko in the middle of a heap of cushions and blankets. He's not-so-subtly sneaking peeks at her sleeves  looking for blood, she surmises. "They are in the custody of the guards," she says.

"Ah," Zuko says, and then adds, in one of those insightful moments that always startles her because they're so rare, "You know, I _wouldn't_ have had a problem with you killing them, just for the record."

"I know." Mai curls into him, fitting her body to his. "But that's not how we do things. It sets a bad example for the peasantry."

Zuko laughs a little, and leans into her, resting his head on her shoulder. He must have taken a bath, because his hair is damp, curling down behind his ears with a light fragrance of soap.

"I wonder if anybody would mind if I sleep in tomorrow."

"You run the country. They'll get over it."

At the foot of the bed, Toph rolls over onto her side and releases a particularly penetrating snore. Then she farts in her sleep.

"You know," Mai says, "it may be dangerous to wake her, but I'm willing to take the risk."

Zuko doesn't answer. Mai looks down to discover that he's fallen asleep on her shoulder, his fingers going slack in hers. She lays her cheek on top of his damp, mussed head, and lets her breathing sync itself to his  in and out, in and out in gentle rhythm. Tonight, just listening to him breathing is enough to fill her with a deep sense of contentment and satisfaction. They've made it through another day, and another night, and she will keep watch until the dawn comes.


End file.
